If You've Ever Felt "Behind" in Your Own Life, Read This

Just the other week I had the in-person fireside chat with my friend Maha Abouelenein. It was SO MUCH FUN, and I am so grateful to all who were able to attend.

I’ve been sitting with the evening for a while now, and it made me think about expectations, time, and the way we speak to ourselves.

Just the other week I had the in-person fireside chat with my friend Maha Abouelenein. It was SO MUCH FUN, and I am so grateful to all who were able to attend.

I’ve been sitting with the evening for a while now, and it made me think about expectations, time, and the way we speak to ourselves.

At 50 years old, Maha was living in her sister’s basement. She had just walked away from a life she’d built in Dubai over 23 years. And in ONE day she sold her car at a mall kiosk. Got rid of all her furniture. And smuggled her dog onto one of the last flights out before the airport closed in March of 2020 (the start of the pandemic). It only took 24 hours for her to pack up the life she spent 23 years making!

According to societal standards, Maha is “behind” on life. You know the standards I’m talking about: Married by thirty. Settled by forty. Kids raised, house paid down, career and identity locked, by fifty.

She had none of that.

And I could deeply resonate with my own version of this feeling of “being behind.” I remember landing my “dream job” shortly after college and thinking I had it made. When less than a year later I ended up living with my parents, sleeping on a twin-size bed, wondering why I was making minimum wage when I had a freaking Master’s Degree. And this feeling of “being behind” has shown up again and again over the years.

When I was still renting an apartment, living paycheck to paycheck, while “everyone else” was buying their first home. When I was unable to get pregnant, and “all” my other friends were having kids.

The Death Sentence of “Time”

The thing about a timeline is that you don’t experience it as a fictional story. You experience it as a fact.

By thirty, you’re supposed to have ___.

By forty, you’re supposed to have ___.

By fifty, you’re supposed to be done wanting ___.

This is the thing about those blanks. The blanks were filled in for you by a culture, a religion, a family, a stranger at a dinner party who once said “Wait, you’re how old?” with the kind of pause that makes a person feel late for something they never agreed to attend in the first place.

This sentence will always set you up to feel like sh*t: “Someone like me should be ___ by ___.”

Why? Because it doesn’t account for the uniqueness that is YOUR LIFE. THAT IS YOU!

What Maha Was “Supposed” to Become

Maha is Egyptian-American. She grew up in Mankato, Minnesota, in the 70’s, when there was no internet and no other brown kids in her school. Inside the four walls of her house: Egyptian rules, Egyptian food, no sleepovers, no boys calling, no prom (unless you snuck out the window like Maha did, haha).

By the inherited script, someone like Maha would have:

• Married young, an Egyptian man, a doctor or an engineer.

• Stayed close to family.

• Raised children.

• Not been single at 56, running a global firm, sitting next to Gary Vee at the Super Bowl.

Instead, at 27, Maha had to move to Egypt to take care of her parents. Left an incredible career and started over by being a SECRETARY to a billionaire. Every part of her screaming, “I have a master’s degree, a decorated career, I am not supposed to be here.”

But she took it. Reluctantly. She studied every paper that crossed her desk. Six months later she was writing the commercial offers for cell phone licenses across Africa. Then Google. Then Netflix. Then her own company. Then she published her book and became a best-selling author.

None of it was part of the “script,” the black-and-white timeline of how each decade of our lives is “supposed to go.”

The Resistance

This is the part nobody warns you about.

When you stop running someone else’s timeline, the next thing that happens is not relief. It’s resistance, it’s a touch of self-doubt.

Because life starts handing you things that don’t match the script. A job you said you’d never take. A move you said you’d never make. A relationship you weren’t ready for. An invitation to try something completely out of your comfort zone.

That resistance, that discomfort is tricky. Because it makes you question yourself. Did I make the wrong choice? What am I doing with my life? Blah blah blah. This is your ego fighting to protect you. Fighting to keep that old program running.

The old program does not want to be rewritten. It likes its little cozy spot on your hard drive (your subconscious); it has been running for YEARS! It has invested in being right. It enjoys being alive in your nervous system, being able to control and predict what comes next.

The only reason Maha took that secretary job was because of her father. She respected him and… she was living under his roof (meaning his rules). The thing I find interesting is that her father could see what her ego couldn’t. Her ego was stuck on, “I’m not going to be a secretary; I am overqualified; this is beneath me. I am not going to go backwards in my career.”

Sometimes our ego doesn’t like to accept the idea of “starting over.” Because the ego likes to move in a linear fashion. A to B to C to D. Not go back and forth “out of order.” Luckily for Maha, the wisdom of her father prevailed, reframing this job as an “opportunity” for her to build her network, make friends, and learn the language of her new home country.

Many pivots in our lives start this way, with resistance.

You don’t want to move to a new city.

You don’t want to take on that new role.

You don’t want that relationship to end.

Then fast forward years later… you’re like, OMG best thing that ever happened! It’s funny because we often focus on the things we are happy that happened. But we should also have gratitude for things that DIDN’T HAPPEN in our lives.

That you didn’t get that job. That you didn’t end up marrying that one person. Thank GOODNESS there were certain things that didn’t work out so that others could.

Our relationship with time and uncertainty needs to change. As we get older, time moves faster. And historically, we are living in the most UNPRECEDENTED times. A damn word I never thought I’d hear so much in my life, haha.

How to Hear the Voice That Isn’t Yours

So here’s where it gets practical.

Now, I am not going to give you some five-step framework for decoding your relationship with time. But what I am going to do is give you a question to ponder on…

The next time you catch yourself describing your life to someone, in your head or out loud, listen for the sentence that contains the words supposed to, or by now, or someone like me.

“I was supposed to be married by now.”

“Someone like me doesn’t ___.”

“By 44 I thought I’d ___.”

When you hear it, stop. Don’t fight it, don’t argue with it, don’t try to talk yourself out of feeling whatever it makes you feel.

Just ask: “According to who?” or “Where did I learn this from?”

Because that little voice is never yours. It belongs to a culture, an institution, a parent, a stranger, etc. And the moment you can see whose voice it is, you can begin removing it from your languaging.

Same Life, Different Past

At 56, single, no children, in the second decade of a global career she built without a map, having buried both her parents only a year apart… Maha says the thing she is proudest of in her entire life is not the Google years. Not the Netflix launch. Not the best-selling book.

It is the 23 years she spent caring for her mother and father.

For most of her life, she narrated those years as a loss. Her older sister got the husband, the kids, the picket fence. She got the responsibility, the hospital beds, the burden of caring for two gravely ill parents.

Then it shifted when her sister told her that she had been envious of her. Because Maha had 23 years of memories with their parents that her sister did not. Same parents. Same family. Different language used to narrate the past.

You cannot change what has happened in your past. But you can change what it means.

Your past, your present, and the future are malleable. Shaped by the language you use to narrate it.

Maha was never “behind.” Neither are you.

Watch the Replay

If you weren’t able to attend in person, you’re in luck because we RECORDED IT!!! We'd love for you to check it out, comment, share, and tell us what hit home for you.

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